


family in all its forms

by subwaywalls



Series: ... in all its forms [3]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Copious Amounts of Dadza, Gen, basically everyone gets turned into children except poor dadza, if you think this is limited to sleepy bois you underestimate my need for Tiny Gremlin Shenanigans, tags tba as more characters appear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27166534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subwaywalls/pseuds/subwaywalls
Summary: Philza joins Dream SMP, finds several children, and realizes he is the only responsible adult here.
Relationships: TommyInnit & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson
Series: ... in all its forms [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1922980
Comments: 93
Kudos: 732





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> listen,,,,,,, i have no reason for this. i just had an Idea and my writer brain went brrr

Philza has never been mobbed by a swarm of fireflies before, but he imagines it would feel something like this. 

“Whoa, okay,” he says, waving his hands through the cloud of floating, glowing particles. “That’s a lot of you. Hi? There wasn’t a raid, was there? You all came out of nowhere.”

All it takes is a bit of will to tune into their normally inaudible chatter. Immediately, a waterfall of tiny voices wash over him, each belonging to an individual speck of floating pixels in the crowd:  _ Phil help!—dad save them they’re—Dream SMP glitched haha—shrunk in the wash—begging, go get your boys—are you  _ still _ mining sand?—need your help—baby boys! baby! _

It’s a bit of a mess, and much faster than Philza is used to. He frowns at them, managing to parse out that something has clearly happened to the people within Dream SMP. That’s probably where most of these chatterboxes came from. “I’m not whitelisted, guys,” he reminds them. “I can’t do anything from here.”

The chat debates this worriedly for a few seconds, allowing Philza to continue his mission of gathering sand from the already half-harvested desert. He keeps them tuned out for the most part, for safety reasons; being able to hear if any monsters are sneaking up on him is somewhat more important than chat having an aneurysm over something they already know, in his opinion. He even switches off chat view, so the thick fog of particles don’t block his line of sight, either.

Most of the time, chatters tend to joke around and make a big fuss over the smallest of things. They even freak out when Philza goes into caves, even though he’s got plenty to keep himself safe at this point, so he doesn’t pay too much mind to their fretting.

That is, until the mechanical, deadpan voice of an alert rings out.  _ Phil I think you should go check. I can’t find Tommy, _ it says.

Philza pauses. Alerts can be silly too, especially since it’s something he has to opt out of hearing instead of opting in, but only the chatters who’ve stuck with him the longest have access to that function. They tend to be a  _ little _ more trustworthy, or at least straightforward with their intent. “What do you mean, you can’t find him?”

A moment passes, and then,  _ It’s not just Tommy. Wilbur and Tube-o are missing too? I think something is actually. Very wrong with the Dream SMP. Go look? _

Chat not being able to find someone isn’t always a cause for concern, since players can allow and disallow spectators as they see fit, but Philza is pretty sure Tommy had only just started allowing them around for the day. He wouldn’t cut them off suddenly and without warning so early, would he? “What’s the last thing you all saw?” he asks.

_ —worried about—don’t know they were just—chat go brrr—suddenly cut off—they shrank—it was hard to— _

No clear information, then. Waving a hand, Philza brings up a private messaging window, figuring he might as well try to get information from the source.

_ <Ph1lzA> hey tommy, u good? _ _   
_ _ <Ph1lzA> your chat came to me all freaked out lol _

He waits. Tommy’s a fairly quick responder, so this shouldn’t take too long to resolve. “Calm down, chat,” Philza tells them, leisurely spinning his shovel and going back to his sand. “I’m sure there was just a glitch or something.”

Except that five, ten minutes pass without a word. Then fifteen minutes, eventually thirty, during which Philza tries to contact Wilbur and Tubbo as well. By the end of the hour, Philza is rightfully concerned, chat is  _ extremely _ anxious, and he hasn’t gotten any replies from any of his friends.

Philza slams shut a shulker box full of sand and decides, fuck it, might as well make an attemp. “Alright,” he says, bringing up the menu to go to another world. “They’re taking too long. Let’s go have a look.”

He doesn’t need to see or hear chat to know that they’re either heaving sighs of relief or screaming  _ finally _ . Typing in the address of his destination only takes a moment, since Tubbo had shared that with him a while back. 

Normally, any attempt to enter would result in the world border bouncing him back. This time, when Philza departs his valued personal world with a simple tap, he feels no resistance from the world border. It doesn’t even stop to check his identity against anything. He just… appears in the middle of a forest without any fanfare at all.

“Is the whitelist down?” he wonders, squinting through the trees to the tall walls surrounding the area. He recognizes from prior description that this must be Dream SMP’s walled-off spawn area. Belatedly, he remembers something about their spawn being trapped and newcomers needing rescue, which he probably should’ve remembered before jumping in headfirst. “Uh. I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to get out of here, actually.”

Chat’s murmurs pick up in pace, swiftly edging to the brink of unlistenable again. 

_ —there’s a hole—hidden tunnel—whitelisted? Pog—check the back?—might’ve sealed it up—it’s underwater—finally on the SMP—just parkour, forehead— _

So they don’t really know. Even if some of the chatters are familiar with the SMP from the other players, Philza imagines they don’t see this side of the world too often; the regulars all have beds and such, probably. Instead of paying attention to chat’s endless conversation, he goes to investigate the walls up close. At least there’s plenty of light to see by and no monsters to worry about in the meantime.

He does eventually find a hole and a short tunnel leading outside the walls. Philza squeezes through it and looks around, finding no indiction of player-made structures. Hesitantly, he checks the local player chat. Since he’s  _ in _ the Dream SMP now, through one blessing or another, he should be able to contact everyone else currently in here.

_ <Ph1lzA> lol I think your whitelist broke _ _   
_ _ <Ph1lzA> does anyone have coords? _

Unfortunately, nobody responds. There are people here—Tommy and Wilbur at the very top of the list, along with Tubbo—but nobody is messaging Philza back.

“Well, chat,” he says, “I guess I’m relying on you all. Any of you remember which way the actual SMP is?”

_ —about them honestly—yes—towards zero zero—don’t know, both negatives—like minus four hundred on both—not that way dad—maybe low negatives?—dad even they don’t—tower up—please find them—you’re facing the wrong—in Manburg I think— _

Philza sighs, glancing up at the sun. From that, figuring how to go negative on both axes is easy enough; the hard part is actually locating anyone.

“They aren’t responding to messages or calls,” he muses. “We can’t really tell if they’re just not getting them or if they can’t respond… Hm. I’m going to grab some materials just in case, and then we’ll see if I can actually, physically find them.”

He mines a tree just to have some blocks on him, and then takes a brief detour to climb up the walls around spawn. It’s easy to scale from the outside, since there are stepping blocks left littered across the otherwise sheer face, and the height lets him get a better sense of direction. Unfortunately, nothing significant renders in from this distance, so he goes ahead and starts trekking through the forest. Chat’s memory of where he should go isn’t exactly reliable, but with nothing else to go off of, he doesn’t have much of a choice.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take long before several tall buildings start to peek over the hills in the distance. “There we go,” Philza says, trying not to sound too relieved. “Found the SMP, that’s step one. Step two is the hard part, though—finding the players.” He squints, unable to catch any movement from this far out. “Should I just start screaming? Maybe if I yell enough, they’ll come out of hiding just to tell me to stop.”

Some of the chat bob up and down in laughter, but a significant amount of them start drifting in a specific direction. They’re bound to Philza and can’t go very far, but he can tell they’re trying to point him somewhere. He listens for a moment— _ this way—Tommy’s over here—we were here—near the ball—and Wilbur were supposed to— _ before following along.

Cresting a hill, Philza spots not only a tower but many other buildings clustered around the area. He clocks the wooden path stretching in and out of sight, recognizing it as a useful landmark that others have rambled on about for a while. 

Tommy seems to have been in an area relatively close to but not directly on the path itself. There’s no path, but there is an unnaturally large square pit carved into the ground. It’s not too deep, maybe only a dozen or so blocks. One corner goes deeper than the others, breaching part of a cave system. He hopes they’re not in there, because he isn’t equipped to go caving right now.

Once the chat starts getting restless, indicating that he’s closing in on where they were last with him, Philza switches to a particle-free view so he can better look for nametags and movement. “Tommy? Wil?” he calls.

Silence. 

“Hello?” he tries. “It’s Phil. Did something happen?”

Between the yawning hole and the partially exposed cave that no doubt gets darker and deeper further in, this place isn’t exactly safe. Philza knows this world allows for death and respawning, but he isn’t exactly eager to throw himself into danger without a plan. His friends must have been here, though; a crafting table sits at the lip of the pit, and Philza thinks he even sees a few stray items rotating serenely in place at the bottom. Not enough to imply that anyone died there, unless they were holding barely anything, but it does mean someone was around within the last five minutes or so.

There’s a chest off to the side, too. Philza opens it out of curiosity and finds several stacks of different minerals and stray mob drops. Probably spare loot from mining out this whole section, though he can’t imagine why such a hole was being dug in the first place.

“I’m going to borrow this,” he says, taking out a stack of cobble. “What were they even doing?”

_ —intimidation—inconvenient hole and tower haha—Tommy made it—he was right here—build a tower— _

Philza looks into the hole. The sides are too steep to slide down without damage, so he places a couple pieces of cobble to make a relatively safe way to descend. “This would be so much easier with wings,” he says. “I miss my elytra already.”

Climbing down, Philza takes a moment to pick up the items on the floor. A bone, a couple pieces of rotten flesh… looks like a couple of mobs that didn’t make it to the cave before they burned up in the sun. 

It occurs to him that the walls of the hole weren’t as perfectly smooth as he’d thought. There’s a lump of cobble sticking out of one side, jutting a couple blocks into the otherwise mined-out interior. Actually, it kind of looks like… the sort of structure someone would do when blocking themselves off.

Philza warily approaches, and raps his knuckle against one of the blocks. He can’t see any name tags, but he thinks he hears the sound of clothes shifting. “Hello?” he says. “It’s Phil. Anyone there?”

Muffled, through the stone, he hears a faint, “No!”

Philza blinks. A rather meme-y response isn’t out of step from his friends, but for some reason, he can’t quite place the voice. Maybe Wilbur, distorted by the stone, but it doesn’t sound right.

It sounds young.

Adjusting his tone to be a little more open, Philza says gently, “Can you come out of there? I’m here to help.”

“No,” comes the response. And then, “There’s monsters.”

“There aren’t,” Philza says.

“Are too!”

“No, they’re gone now. It’s safe.”

A brief pause. “You… you promise?”

“I promise. I’ll even seal up the cave, and then there definitely won’t be any monsters anywhere. Would you like that?”

“Mhm.”

“Alright.” Philza straightens, ignoring the alert going  _ Dadza to the rescue _ in his head. He blocks off the cave in the other corner of the pit with cobble easily enough, all the while unable to shake the feeling that he  _ should _ recognize the speaker. He can’t figure out why. 

Once he returns to the voice in the cobble, he crouches beside it and says, “Okay. It’s safe now, I promise. No monsters anywhere. You can come out.”

There’s enough of a pause that Philza debates on the merits of making a stone pickaxe for himself, but eventually he hears the sound of a breaking block.

One of the cobble pieces pops out, revealing a hidden one-by-one space that’s two blocks tall. As light streams in and illuminates the inside of it, Philza sees… two children.

Specifically, he sees two weirdly familiar children wearing incredibly familiar clothes. The taller of the two has a woolen hat lopsided on curly hair and a well-worn brown coat wrapped around him, while the smaller has with a red and white tee. 

This close it doesn’t matter that they’re crouching. Philza’s gaze flickers over the name tags hovering pale and washed-out above them, one reading “WilburSoot” and the other “TommyInnit”, feeling his heart drop to the pit of his stomach.

These two are Wilbur and Tommy. They  _ have _ to be Wilbur and Tommy, except they can’t, because these actual children look tiny and young and suspicious of Philza, like they don’t recognize him at all. If he had to place their ages, he’d put Wilbur at ten at absolute  _ most _ , and Tommy even younger than that.

Which doesn’t make any sense.

“Uh,” Philza says, “do you want to… get out of there? It’s safe for now, but it’s not very nice. I bet it’s real dark in there. Why don’t we go to an actual house?”

_ Why are they small? _ says an alert, as though Philza isn’t mentally screaming the exact same question. He knows without looking or listening that chat must be losing their absolute shit right now, but with how warily the kids are eyeing him, he can’t afford to be anything but steady. Like someone trying to befriend a skittish alley cat.

“You’re Wilbur and Tommy, right?” he asks. Wilbur nods, but Tommy just clings onto Wilbur’s oversized sleeve and doesn’t say anything, staring wide-eyed and terrified up at him. “Do you not remember me?”

“Should we?” the tiny Wilbur says.

Philza winces. “Well, I’m Phil,” he says. “I came here to help out, so… here I am. Are you guys hurt at all?”

Tommy sniffles, which is endearingly precious from what would normally be the little gremlin child of their friend group. “A zombie hit me,” he says, voice thin and on the verge of tears. “And—and there was a skeleton, and—”

“Do you guys not have food?” Philza asks. The boys shake their heads, though Philza doesn’t know if they  _ actually _ don’t have any food in their inventory or if they just don’t know how to access it. Either way, he passed at least a few patches of farmland on the way here. “Let’s get out of this hole and I’ll find you something to eat so you can heal, okay?”

It takes some convincing, but Wilbur does eventually break the second cobble block with his stone pick. They wobble out of their little box, with Tommy hobbling along like his leg hurts him. Philza offers to carry him, and isn’t exactly surprised when he’s turned down. Tommy’s never liked being babied, and even in this situation, it seems he prefers using his own two feet.

Even though the boys don’t know Philza, he thinks that  _ something _ must be leftover of their adult selves, because Wilbur is still twitchy and paranoid. Not to the extent that he was during the very recent festival, obviously, but enough that it would be weird for a supposedly untraumatized kid.

“Do you remember what you were doing down in that hole?” Philza asks, making a simple staircase for them to get out of the hole, because he does not trust babies to tower safely.

“I was digging,” Tommy chirps. “Digging a lot.”

“Why?”

“Um… I’unno.”

“What were you doing before that, then?”

Tommy scrunches up hs nose as he thinks back. Wilbur gives Philza a distrustful look (less scalding and more adorable than it would look on his normally aged face, honestly), but so long as he follows and lets Tommy swing their linked arms between them, Philza doesn’t have any problem with it. “Hm,” Tommy says, drawing the tone out. “Hmmm. Don’t remember! What about you, Phil?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, what were you doing?”

“I was mining sand.” Philza crooks a smile at them, hoping he doesn’t look  _ too _ relieved that they’re out of the hole and back on the presumably safe wooden path. “Then your chat came screaming over to me that something happened, so… I went to check on you.” Speaking of chat, he briefly switches to chat perspective to see if any of them have returned to Tommy and Wilbur, but as far as he can tell, all the particles are still centered on him.

“What’s my chat?” Tommy asks.

_ He’s fucking adorable, _ an alert deadpans, and Philza is eternally grateful for the fact that nobody else can hear it. The last thing he needs is a baby Tommy screaming swears at the top of his lungs.  _ Tell them we say they’re adorable, Phil. _

“Chat’s like a bunch of spectators,” he explains. “They can watch you and keep you company if you let them. The ones that usually stick with you miss you a lot, Tommy. Same goes for you, Wilbur—they were really worried about you guys.” 

“Oh.” Tommy doesn’t quite seem like he gets it.

Wilbur says, “They were worried?”

“They care about you a lot,” Philza promises. He looks up from examining a small patch of crops growing by a furrow of water. “If you’d like, I can show you how to talk to them?”

“I wanna talk to ‘em!” Tommy pipes up. “How do I talk to chat!”

Philza opens his mouth, realizes he doesn’t know how to explain things that are normally innate to player abilities, and hesitates. A lot of it is force of will, right? How is he supposed to tell a child to just—manipulate the laws of their reality and switch his vision to a different plane of awareness. “Um. Eat these carrots first,” he says, pulling the vegetables from the soil and dumping them into Tommy’s hands. “Let’s make sure you’re full health, and then you can—”

_ Phil how dare you deny us direct contact with them, _ another alert says, to which Philza suppresses the urge to roll his eyes.

“—if everyone is  _ patient _ , afterward, I can teach you. But let me check on that leg too, okay?”

With only a little pouting along the way, Tommy accepts both this and the carrots. Philza deliberately doesn’t listen to what he’s certain is a lot of plaintive, impatient wailing from his amalgamation of a chat. They can be addressed later; first, he makes sure that Tommy’s leg is okay (it is; just a little scraped and bruised, nothing a good night’s rest wouldn’t remedy).

Once he’s certain Tommy isn’t suffering from any serious affliction, he just the rest of the carrots and passes most of it to Wilbur, reserving a few to replant everything he’d harvested. “Eat up,” he says, when Wilbur doesn’t immediately do so.

Wilbur blinks. “What about you?” he says, touchingly mindful.

“My hunger isn’t too low yet,” Philza reassures. That might not make sense to the kid, mechanically speaking, but he’ll get the gist. “I’m sure there’s more food around here. Probably in a few of those bases,” he says, tipping his hat towards the looming towers scattered around.

Belatedly, Philza remembers that territorial disputes are a  _ thing _ here, but clearly Wilbur doesn’t remember anything about them, because he raises no concerns over being ambushed for trespassing. Philza doesn’t even know where the boundary lines are drawn, so he’ll have to rely on the excuse of being new and unallied to any side if someone catches him.

Wait—Wilbur and Tommy are still exiled, aren’t they? If they’re found by their enemies, whoever that entails… 

Philza glances to the name tags hovering loyally over their heads and sucks in a terse breath through his teeth. This could go belly-up  _ very _ quickly, if he isn’t careful.

Priorities. “Are you feeling any better now?” he asks. “We should probably get to shelter, first. Do you remember where your houses are, or where you live?” 

“Here?” Tommy says. “Or in the forest?”

A forest is probably not the best place to spend the night with a couple of children. “Maybe somewhere here,” Philza says. “It’s… not like anyone else is around.” As far as he can tell, that is. Time to just borrow a room somewhere and pray that nobody particularly violent or antagonistic finds them. “We’ll just take a quick look around, see what there is to see. I don’t suppose you’ve spotted Tubbo at any point, have you?”

They shake their heads. Finding him will be next on the agenda, then. Philza hopes he’ll locate the kid before night falls. Normally, Tubbo can handle himself just fine.

If whatever happened to Tommy and Wilbur happens to him, though—that’s a whole different barrel of fish.


	2. Chapter 2

Philza is starting to learn that a lot of buildings built here are all display and no interior. Several of the towers especially sit empty and sometimes even open, meaning any old mob could walk in if they were lucky enough. 

On the plus side, Philza gets to drag Tommy and Wilbur with him on an impromptu tour of the most customized areas of this world. The minus side is that it takes a while to find a suitable shelter he’d feel safe with leaving them at for a while, and if he waits any longer, it’ll get dark enough for mobs to start spawning in. 

“Just—stay here,” he says, ushering them into a fairly secure house surrounded by bamboo. “I need to get Tubbo, but I’ll be back soon. The monsters won’t be able to get to you while you’re in here, okay?” He doesn’t know if zombies have the ability to break through wooden doors here, but he figures a couple of dirt blocks will be plenty to stop that from happening.

“Are you gonna fight the monsters?” Tommy asks.

“I’m going to try and get back before they even appear,” Philza says. Without armor or weapons, he isn’t keen on any direct confrontations. “Stay here, okay? Don’t come out no matter what. Actually, wait, let me check something.”

He brings up the messaging window for the local world.

_ <Ph1LzA> can you see this? _

Wilbur jumps a bit, and Tommy gapes like a kid at a magic trick. “Whoa—that’s the thing we saw before! How’d you do that!”

Repressing the urge to ruffle Tommy’s hair affectionately, Philza grins and types out another message.

_ <Ph1LzA> It’s hard to explain but if you think about accessing the local world chat and move your arm, you should see how _ _   
_ _ <Ph1LzA> Once it opens, just type what you want to say _ _   
_ _ <WilburSoot> hello? _

“You catch on fast,” Philza says, giving Wilbur an approving nod. “You get it yet, Tommy?”

He’s got his tongue poking out of his mouth as he taps at the air in front of him. “Um…” 

_ <TommyInnit> hi _ _   
_ _ <Ph1lzA> there you go, perfect! _

“Now we can communicate even if we’re super far away from each other,” Philza says, feeling the weight of worry lift off his shoulders a little. “There are other things you can do with that, but I’ll show you those when I re-introduce you to chat, alright? For now, just keep an eye out and type a message if anything goes wrong. Don’t tap on anything else otherwise, I don’t want you accidentally turning anything on or off before you’re ready. I’ll let you know once I find Tubbo and start heading back.”

“Tubbo,” Tommy repeats, brows furrowed. There’s a tiny inkling of recognition there, like he recognizes the feel of the name in his mouth but doesn’t know why it sounds like home. “Tubbo?”

Philza nods. “Your best friend. Don’t worry about it,” he adds, realizing that such information will only further confuse him. 

Tommy’s quiet for a moment, and then a new message appears in the log.

_ <TommyInnit> Tubbo _ _   
_ _ <Tubbo_> a _

“There he is!” Tommy says excitedly, oblivious to the way Philza straightens with surprise.

_ <TommyInnit> HI TUBBO _ _   
_ _ <Ph1lzA> Tubbo where are you? _ _   
_ _ <Tubbo_> aaaaaaaaaa _ _   
_ _ <Tubbo_> hello _ _   
_ _ <Tubbo_> i am in a rume _ _   
_ _ <Ph1LzA> what kind of room? _ _   
_ _ <Tubbo_> made of rocks _

Underground then, maybe. Probably a bunker; if it were an open cave, then he’d be toast already—assuming he’s been shrunken and left without his older memories like the other two. Philza’s fairly confident in that assumption, considering the lack of response earlier and the implication that Tubbo only just learned how to chat from Philza’s messages.

_   
_ _ <TommyInnit> phil says we are best friends tubbo _ _   
_ _ <Tubbo_> we are? _ _   
_ _ <Ph1LzA> you will be if you aren’t already _ _   
_ _ <Ph1LzA> Tubbo I’m gong to come get you and take you with me so you guys can meet somewhere safe, okay? _ _   
_ _ <Tubbo_> okay _ _   
_ _ <Ph1LzA> can you tell me more about the room? _ __   
_ <Tubbo_> its very long with lots of stairs _ _   
_ __ <Tubbo_> the stairs are wood sometimes but mostly made of rocks

Philza, unfamiliar with the various structures here, turns to the ones who  _ are _ .

“Well, chat?” he says, briefly glancing at the thick swarm of particles still hovering around him. There seem to be even more than before, actually. He has to switch off the view in order to see Wilbur and Tommy through them all.

_ —sounds like the prime path—Tubbo!—ask for coordinates—Tommy built that—the path to Pogtopia—oh no you’re never—in Pogtopia! That’s—prime path to—a tunnel—branches off, Tommy—hurry up and— _

“The prime path,” Philza repeats. “Isn’t that the oak wood, not stone or cobble… no, this one’s a different one? How many prime paths are there?”

_ —no it’s—Tommy built more—go under the river—connected a path to—so he could still have—just one—one but Tommy branched off—entrance by the water—underwater entrance—signs and stuff— _

Philza shakes his head, his ears still ringing from the sheer volume of chatters trying to talk at once. He gets the gist, though; Tubbo’s probably in the tunnel that connects the prime path to Pogtopia, the hidden nation of refugees, and there’s a way to get in somewhere by the water.

“Alright,” he says to Wilbur and Tommy, “you two stay here, I’ll be right back. Chat, if you’re wrong, I’m locking all of you out.”

He runs out, pausing only to block off the door with dirt, and starts going down the oak plank road. There’s plenty of lakes and rivers here, both player-made and naturally generated, but Philza figures he’s looking for one that borders the prime path. The path stretches over a valley with water  _ in _ it, but that’s probably not what he’s looking for.

Philza follows the path over a much larger stretch of river. Hoping that this is it, because otherwise Tubbo must be  _ incredibly _ far, he looks carefully over the edge near the bank.

There’s an odd shadowed area—darker than it should be, and deeper than expected. Philza tries not to get his hopes up too much, but when he spots signs where there should be blocks, which let players pass through but block the water, he’s pretty confident that he managed to find the right place.

Sure enough, a tunnel stretches on with mineral walls and a wooden path stretches down the middle of the staircase downward. Thankfully, it seems well-designed enough to be mob-proof.

“Tubbo?” he calls. “It’s Phil, are you there?”

His voice echoes down the tunnel. Some of the torches flicker, but there’s no response otherwise. There’s enough light here for now, but Philza takes one of the torches off the wall to carry with him, just in case. 

The good thing about this tunnel is that it only goes one way. Without the risk of getting lost, Philza feels comfortable with picking up the pace a little and outright sprints down the long halls.

Further in, the wooden path hovers precariously over a very spawnable stone floor. A zombie or two end up lumbering after him as he runs through, but they’re quickly left behind.

Once Philza feels like he’s run long enough that where he’s standing wouldn’t have been in earshot of the entrance, he shouts again, “Tubbo? Are you here?”

“Hello?” comes faintly, from the distance. 

Philza nearly sags with relief. “It’s Phil!” he says, hurrying towards the source of the voice. It’s not the Tubbo voice he recognizes, but if he imagines a very,  _ very _ young Tubbo, it kind of clicks. “I’m over here, can you— _ oh _ , hi.”

On one hand, he kind of knows what to expect, but on the other, he can’t really prepare himself for the very short figure in an oversized shirt. Tommy clung to Wilbur enough that his tinyness got a little swallowed up in Wilbur’s shadow, but Tubbo’s just sitting on his own. He is a very fragile kid in the mouth of a very dangerous ravine.

“Hey, come here,” Philza says, and Tubbo meets him halfway.

“I was looking for a ways out,” Tubbo says, reaching up to hold his hand as though on instinct. 

Philza laughs, winding their fingers together to make sure he’ll notice if Tubbo decides to drop his hand. Kids can be surprisingly slippery, sometimes. With his free hand, he brings up the local message log. “Yeah, I think you went the exact wrong way from the exit. You could be in worse places, though. Isn’t this Pogtopia?”

_ <Ph1LzA> I found Tubbo! will be back soon _

“What’s a Pogtopia?”

Ah. Probably should’ve seen that one coming. “Nothing,” Philza says, because trying to explain political disputes to a child when said child used to know more about the events than he did is not something he wants to get into while they’re on a time limit. “Lets go before it gets too dark and the monsters start spawning.”

“Monsters?” Tubbo’s grip tightens a little. “What kind of monsters?”

“Undead ones, mostly.” Philza starts speed-walking back up the path, though he can’t go too fast. Tubbo’s legs are only so long. “There are zombies and skeletons, and sometimes spiders, too. And endermen, but avoiding them is easy. Just don’t look at them.”

Philza doesn’t bother going into much more detail than that, and it seems like Tubbo soaks in the information without trouble. He figures it’s because a part of Tubbo—the part that remains from his older self—already knows it, so it’s less learning and more… being reminded of something from a different time.

“You said I was friends with Tommy, right, Phil?” Tubbo asks. “What’s he like?”

“He’s…” Philza hesitates on the word  _ nice _ , not because he considers Tommy to be mean, but because he knows the kd to be more of a gremlin than anything else.  _ Nice _ is a pleasant platitude that doesn’t really say very much, anyway. “Tommy’s very energetic,” he says. “Gets into loads of trouble, but he’s very sharp about it.”

Tubbo hums, chewing this over for a bit, and then nods. “He sounds really cool.”

Philza prays they hit it off well. There’s no reason they wouldn’t, when they get along so well as teenagers, but he can’t help the crawling feeling that their younger selves might be different enough to actually clash.

If— _ when _ Philza figures out how to undo this, he hopes the afflicted parties don’t remember anything. The things they do now, without inhibition, might end up straining a few relationships.

The two of them come to a stop at the end of the path. It’s the entrance, technically, with the signs holding up water above them. “Whoa,” Tubbo says, reaching up with a hand to touch the suspended water.

Faintly, Philza hears a groan. The water obscures the sky, but it can’t hide the fact that it’s quite dark out there, with the sun completely disappeared under the horizon. He quickly tugs Tubbo back a few steps with their joined hands. “Hold on,” he says keeping his voice hushed. “I think there’s zombies nearby.”

Normally, the general presence of common mobs wouldn’t stop him. Even when he doesn’t have any armor on, he knows he can outpace them.

The issue is that he knows Tubbo won’t be able to.

“What do we do?” Tubbo says, thankfully taking a page from Philza’s book and keeping his voice down too. “Are we going to fight the monsters?”

“We are going to  _ run _ from the monsters,” Philza corrects. “Or… you can get on my back, and  _ I _ will run from the monsters, because my legs are longer than yours.”

“You are very tall,” Tubbo agrees. “What if they catch up to you?”

“You won’t weigh me down that much,” Philza says. “I’m very fast. And—listen to me, Tubbo—I won’t let you get hurt, but if I put you down and tell you to run, then you go where I tell you to, okay?”

Tubbo blinks at him. “Uh, okay.”

“The house we’re going to is surrounded in bamboo, There’s dirt over the door, so it’ll take a moment to open, but even then you aren’t going to get hurt. I promise.”

“It’s s’rounded in Boo,” Tubbo says to himself, and giggles. He seems nervous, though, his free hand coming up to clutch at his chest like it’s sore. “He won’t hurt me? Nothing’s going to kill me?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Philza reassures. 

“Are there any lights?” Tubbo asks. “I don’t like the lights.”

Puzzled, Philza says, “Like torches? But they help keep the monsters out.”

“No, not those ones. I like those. I don’t like the color ones that fly.”

“I don’t think there’s any of those around,” Philza says, having no idea what he could be talking about. Hanging soul lanterns, maybe? He hasn’t seen many of those being used around this world, though.

Tubbo seems satisfied regardless. “Okay!” he says, and lifts his arms expectantly. He remains obediently still as Philza turns his back to him and crouches. Tubbo wraps his arms around Philza’s neck and hops up, letting the older player take care of catching his feet and making sure he won’t slide back off.

“Take a deep breath,” Philza instructs. “We’re going to need to swim for a bit.”

Tubbo very loudly inhales a huge breath, making a tiny sound when he holds it. Philza takes that as incentive to jump up into the water, using one arm and his legs to propel himself upward.

Almost immediately, a drowned turns around and starts wading towards them. It’s slow-moving, though, and Philza breaches the surface and climbs onto the bank far before it manages to catch up to him.

More concerning are the skeletons who’ve heard him splash out of the water and are turning towards him now, bows drawn, bones rattling. If they take a shot at Philza while his back is turned, it’s not him who’ll eat the damage from that arrow.

But he won’t let that happen. He refuses to let that happen.

Years of a deathless world has taught him how to dodge the skeletons. They’re predictable, as all undead mobs are, driven only by the same aching hunger of their unliving, unlearning bodies. Philza adopts a jagged path, careful to twist and turn just so to throw off the skeletons’ aim, and sprints for the house with dirt blocking the door.

Tubbo’s grip on his shoulder is nearly painful from how tightly he’s clutching on, but Philza doesn’t say anything. Better too tight than to let go. The kid’s terrified enough as is that he might not hear anything he says, anyway; he’s panting shallow, panicked breaths against the back of Philza’s neck.

Philza practically slams into the dirt blocks and immediately digs through the first—the other suddenly vanishes, Wilbur’s hand grabbing him and pulling him through the door, which slams shut behind them.

Tommy stands aside with the dirt block he’d mined in hand, watching nervously as Philza catches his breath and lets out a long,  _ long _ sigh of relief.

“Thanks,” he says, and crouches to let Tubbo off. 

Tubbo doesn’t let go.

“Tubbo?”

“M’fine,” Tubbo says, muffled into Philza’s hat.

Tommy comes closer, stepping around Philza to prod at Tubbo. “Hey,” he says. “I’m Tommy!”

Philza can’t exactly see behind him, but he feels Tubbo shift. And then, “Hi Tommy, I’m Tubbo.”

“Look at this!” Out of the corner of his eye, Philza watches Tommy put the dirt down, letting the small square expand into a cube as items always do. “I just found out how to do that!”

“Whoa, that’s cool!” Tubbo’s hold is looser now, and he’s starting to slide to the floor.

Philza supposes he doesn’t need to teach them the basics of manipulating the world around them, if they’re picking it up that quickly. They’re all very bright to begin with, and technically already know things, so all it takes is a bit of a reminder or muscle memory.

_ Dadza introduce us to them now, _ an alert demands in utter monotone. If it were in a chatter’s voice, Philza knows it would be a very, very loud yell.  _ If you don’t we’re disowning you. Seven hundred seventy-seven— _

And nope, opting out of hearing the rest of that now. “That’s very impressive,” he says to Tommy, who puffs up like a proud bird.

“I watched you do it and figured it out!”

“You’re very clever.” Philza hesitates, glancing back to the door, and then says, “Think you can move that over to the door so it’s blocked even if the monsters knock it down? Tubbo, take mine and put it on top of his, okay?”

Both the kids nod eagerly. Tommy mines the dirt back up, and then takes Tubbo with him as they gingerly approach the door. There’s groaning outside, but not particularly aggressively, and they successfully block it off with dirt on their own.

“I’m the best!” Tommy crows, hopping around in delight.

_ Phil stop stalling _ , another alert says, and Philza squints at the chat that he knows is there.

“Don’t push me, you guys,” he warns under his breath. “Be patient. I’ll do it in the morning, they’re probably tired.” Whether or not they’ll be able to sleep with monsters around is a separate issue, but one Philza thinks he can solve if they explore this house a little more. 

Wilbur, who’s been watching him fairly closely, says, “We looked upstairs while you were away.”

“Did you find anything?”

“There’s a bed and a bunch of chests. It’s got a lot of stuff in it. We didn’t know if any of it was dangerous, so we didn’t touch anything, but yeah.”

So this is one of the buildings that was actually lived in, then.  _ Please _ let there be food and armor in there, at least. “That’s helpful,” Philza says. “Thanks, Wil.”

Going up the steps, Philza quickly locates the bed (only big enough to comfortably fit one person, but maybe the kids could squeeze together) and the aforementioned chests. He counts on the fact that he hasn’t heard any trapped chest shenanigans from the people living here and reaches out to the closest one. Holding his breath, he creaks open its to see several empty compartments, but several filled ones too.

There’s bamboo and dirt and stone, as well as an entire block of iron, which Philza immediately takes. The next chest contains several different pieces of worked wood, and the one after that actually does contain a variety of food. Baked potatoes and sweet berries aren’t the best sources of energy, but they’re leagues better than nothing at all.

He fills up his inventory with wood and iron and food, and immediately goes to the nearby crafting table to make himself an iron chestplate and a shield. He doesn’t equip it yet, but keeps it on hand as he goes back downstairs.

Tommy and Tubbo have kicked it off as he expected, rambling on to each other in increasingly more excited tones as Wilbur interjects and snickers with them on occasion.

Just as Philza opens his mouth to ask if they’re tired enough to sleep, a new message pops up.

_ [Technoblade has joined the game.] _


End file.
